35 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

Sure, and I understand that. At the same time, while I did see some extra load-in, I was also able to crank up the settings in other ways and get more detail than I could get before, personally, and that felt like it would be on average a win for everyone. And definitely some people in flighting did sound the alarm, but in general it's hard to tell how beta tester feedback will translate, because beta testers are a self-selected segment, and so you tend to get a big bias, even if the pool is really large.

Nonetheless, of course, nobody is ignoring the lessons that can be taken away from this, from the dev end.

-Matt

Maybe then a frank Post-Mortem article from Asobo on what went wrong here and how things can be altered to avoid it in the future would clear the air and help restore confidence ?

Just now, Matchstick said:

Maybe then a frank Post-Mortem article from Asobo on what went wrong here and how things can be altered to avoid it in the future would clear the air and help restore confidence ?

Hey we are not in  Maoist China where people had to wear a paper cap and be booed by the crowd when reciting their self criticism ! Let them work and make a nice hot fix. That will be enough for me 😉.

 

1 hour ago, MattNischan said:

I think folks need to exhibit some understanding.

Absolutely not. This is a product just the same as a dishwasher or a lawnmower. Freeware is one thing. Payware is another. And though there were cries for better performance I saw none that wanted it at the expense of degraded graphics. Any that did want more FPS could have just turned their settings down without this travesty.

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by jarmstro

56 minutes ago, RandallR said:

Just one question - how in the heck are you flying the TBM?  Since the update, I can no longer get throttle control (the throttle will not move into feathered high idle position) - every remedy that has been recommended to me has failed.

I am sure you don't want to hear this but I am not having an issue with the TBM and my Honeycomb Bravo. I just have to use 2 levers, Throttle & Prop. Keep the Prop maxed until shutdown when I pull it back. That shifts the in-cockpit lever to the right.

1 hour ago, MattNischan said:

And they were truly, honestly, pretty giddy (and I mean that, there was seriously a palpable excitement) to give all of you a huge performance boost. The developers really did think that simmers would be absolutely so super stoked to go fly with a way smoother, faster product. And, now, you have instead a pretty demoralized team scratching their heads, because everyone kept hearing over and over that performance was one of the biggest complaints, and that yeah, visuals are great and all, but they don't make a great sim, and what good are they if it isn't smooth and fast?

Man this hurts so bad to hear. Seems a large part of the community is toxic and lacks understanding / empathy. The team has truly done an incredible job, and they don’t deserve to have to deal with the backlash from this part of the community. They should be praised for their efforts. I really hope they’re able to keep their heads up after this - seems incredibly demoralizing to put months of work into something only to have a subset of the community completely discredit and complain about the work you’ve done. 

To those of you who keep spreading these ridiculous theories and act like Asobo is out to get us by prioritizing Xbox simmers, if they prematurely end development of MSFS, we’ll probably know why.

It would be difficult to be a developer and read comments in forums about your work, though I don't think WT has themselves received much critique directly since most of their work hasn't had many issues, comparatively speaking for certain. 

For the record, I have been on the other side. I have been a developer who would occasionally visit a forum (never allowed to post) and have to read issues. It was for regular software rather than entertainment though, so yes it is gut wrenching to hear negative stuff, I know.

I think no matter how much discussion there is, this was still a blunder. So I wouldn't necessarily blame paying customers for speaking up too much, but i do blame the tone of the forum in general. That is every forum, and I doubt it will improve. We can hope...

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by Alpine Scenery

2 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Absolutely not. This is a product just the same as a dishwasher or a lawnmower.

Someone posted this on the FS Forum and I thought it made alot of sense. I copied it and am pasting it here. 

 

"Indeed, this goes way beyond the graphics issues, and I’m a little worried the focus is so much on that. This was supposed to be a sim update, not a world update, and it’s done nothing to fix all the problems in the actual flying simulator, introduced a load of new ones, and worsenned the graphics at the same time. Stuff like weight settings being lost as soon as you click to another part of the world map is just so so amateur. So now rather than fixing the already existing problems, they are having to focus on just getting back to where they were before.

I am resigned to the problems in atc, flight planning, flight models, weather, abysmal turbulence and wind effects never being fixed. And a lot of people seem fine with that judging by the apologists insisting we have a perfect game. Clearly not very serious simmers because at present it’s just not a flight sim. But maybe it was never going to be given the choices made about its development. The way they neutered turbulence in an earlier update because some people complained that flying in a thunderstorm gets a bit shaky shows the interest is not in realism. Cross-wind landings - no challenge whatsoever in the game."

7 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Hey we are not in  Maoist China where people had to wear a paper cap and be booed by the crowd when reciting their self criticism ! Let them work and make a nice hot fix. That will be enough for me 😉.

 

Personally when a company has messed up as badly as this (and lets be frank this release was bad whatever the reason) I want to be confident that the company understand why this is and is serious about improving things.

Releasing another hotfix is great (and important) but on it's own isn't going to prevent another debacle like SU5.

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by Matchstick

3 minutes ago, Maxis said:

I'm glad that lessons are being learned. Hopefully they are the right ones so there isn't a repeat of what transpired. 

I can't but agree . The lesson was taught but was it learned 😏 ? This is an important issue in other sectors than the software industry (eg the military...).

Now, we have had the feeling from the outside, since the alpha, that the beta-tests have been at best telemetry, at worst, a make believe of participation. 

This pitiful episode is also the sign that the good engineers at Asobo and Microsoft don't know how the user base reacts and what it expects. 

@Bobsk8 I think a lot of what you quoted comes from Asobo's multiple development streams (I think they said around 5 branches) being merged into one for SU5; some bugs that got fixed previously ended up back in the live release. As the workstreams are merged now (and I believe will be going forward), I hope these issues should be fixed promptly and not reoccur.

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by ckyliu

1 hour ago, MattNischan said:

And, now, you have instead a pretty demoralized team scratching their heads,

Yeah, being disappointed by SU5 myself (haven't flown since, only done the occasional tweaking, obviously to no avail) I can feel with them. I agree that parts of the uproar by the "community" probably was a disservice to some extent. In the end, this "community" consists of individuals with their own expectations and perceptions. The one side fears to have lost what they appreciated, the other fears the loss of what they think they have gained. So it is no wonder the whole discussion gets emotional to the point that it isn't a discussion any more, only insistence. I have given up at some point because it mostly was not about discussing or arguing but about being right.

And all that has gotten worse by the day, without any clear statement. The "acknowledgement" about triaging reported issues obviously was too late (day 6) and not able to reign in the fear that what we were seeing could be the new standard. Yes, I'm guilty of that thought - because what do I know what's going on at MS and its subsidiaries. Maybe something like "Yes, we made changes that were meant as an improvement and may have an impact on what you are expieriencing. Rest assured that we stand by our word not to downgrade anything and give us a few days to asses your valued feedback" one day after the storm broke lose (that would have been day 2 at the latest) would have calmed the waters a bit more.

And let's not forget, that there were Beta testers, still bound by their NDA. I get a feeling from the few that posted that there seems to be some frustration too. I can only assume that some of the issues (if not most) must have been reported, if they have not been last-day changes.

So it's not only "folks" that need to think about their approach - although they sure should. There were lessons to learn for all. Let's hope for Friday/Monday.

21 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Did we ask for for better performance ? Not the feeling I have reading regularly this forum.

One of the biggest complaints, even here on Avsim, have certainly been stutters, and plenty of folks about FPS. How many comments have there been about glass cockpit perf? Maybe my perspective here is skewed, but I certainly have not gotten the sense that folks were fine with performance. If so, then I don't get why everyone was so hyped about _more_ performance.

21 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Just telling us it aint so, is a little short. 

I don't think that's a fair representation of what I said at all, nor a fair representation of what Lionel said. And, in any case, how it fits on the S is not always relevant for the PC, because they don't run the same visual quality settings. The other thing to consider here is that memory management is expensive. Having to do less of it is also, itself, a way to increase performance, sometimes in a big way for some engine systems that do a reasonable amount of dynamic allocation. So, it's not a "one or the other" case.

21 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

From day one, we decided that we couldn’t sacrifice quality. It needs to be completely intact and maybe even better. The good news is that it looks great and it plays in some ways better .

The big issue here is that for many users, including myself (Threadripper, 2080ti, not exactly a slouch system), it is better, because I can add sliders and get the same FPS as before. I understand that users with even beefier setups who are already completely max'd out are not necessarily OK with the engineering done to make that happen, but I truly don't think there was malice in those statements or intent to mislead. The feeling was that almost everyone who played the sim would be able to either fly with more FPS or get more detail for the same FPS.

3 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

This is a product just the same as a dishwasher or a lawnmower.

And, just like a dishwasher, Maytag is coming out and adding new features to it every month or two for no extra cost. That fresh coat of paint from Honda after I used my mower for 8 months was really nice of them!

14 minutes ago, Matchstick said:

Maybe then a frank Post-Mortem article from Asobo on what went wrong here and how things can be altered to avoid it in the future would clear the air and help restore confidence ?

It's truly hard to say what would be a net positive or not. Oftentimes developers opt to just be quiet, because most of the time you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, so to speak. I am curious as to what kind of statement you feel would be helpful, though.

-Matt

We can show understanding, and believe me that we do, after one year of betatesting, full of surprises, Sim Update after Sim Update, we really STILL do. Not because understanding was well earned, but because we wanted to. But this does not excuse that we bought a simulator exactly 12 months ago which was advertised to be updated, enriched, which in fact has been , but it has also been a testbed, fixed, once and again, broken an repaired multiple times and still lacking many of the things that were either advertised or naively taken for granted, all of this without the user being able to choose or wait.

If you want to go the extra mile , remove FSX code, swap old code, test new features, bugfix etc, you can´t expect to have  millions of people "understanding", expressing frustration with humility , patience and gratitude. Releasing a product in Beta stage and fixing it on the way, for one year, has consequences. 

I love FS and I am grateful for what Asobo has done. But come on, don´t expect people to feel sorry or guilty about Microsoft  everytime they feel doubt or frustration.

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by Aristoteles

People can try to be more creatively respectful given that people are reading the comments and taking it negatively.

For me, I was gone for 2-3 months, I come back and try to load dev mode, 4 CTD's in a row. Even after getting it loaded, it was workaround after workaround after workaround, about 2 hours in I decided forget it, I'll just go play the SIM.

Things changed for weird reasons, try to play the game, everything looked funny. Not much more to say really (for now). Though I do hope things continue to improve.

 

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by Alpine Scenery

30+ years in IT has taught me that nothing ever changes - users will always be users and devel teams will always be devel teams.

Cheers

bs